


The Beginning

by kayliemalinza



Category: Animorphs - Katherine A. Applegate, Pacific Rim (Movies)
Genre: Crossover, Dogs, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-21
Updated: 2018-05-21
Packaged: 2019-05-09 14:53:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,885
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14718209
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kayliemalinza/pseuds/kayliemalinza
Summary: Marshal Pentecost comes to the Wall to find Raleigh Becket and finds a handsome stray instead. However, it’s not until Mako meets the dog that their fates are sealed.PacRim/Animorphs crossoverNo Animorphs characters involved (apologies to anyone who gets here from the Animorphs fandom tag; I'm sure it's filled with crossovers.) No Yeerks, either.Teaser:The human part of him saysWhat if they’re not here for you?and Raleigh doesn’t know which answer he’d prefer. He doesn’t have to know. That’s the best part about this body, besides the warm pelt and a tail that curves over his nose while he sleeps, better than the teeth that crack bone and the open smile on some men’s faces and the cascading bliss of their fingers along his spine.





	The Beginning

**Author's Note:**

> NB: if you haven’t read Animorphs, don’t worry! All you need to know is that when someone has the ability to morph–given to them by the blue cube–they can “acquire” the DNA of an animal by touching it, then morph into that animal. Morphing takes about two minutes and is painless. While in morph, the animal instincts can rise up and overtake the human brain, so some self-control is required. Animorphs have to be careful to only stay in morph for two hours or less. If they’re in an animal morph past the time limit, then they’re stuck in that morph forever (or until Plot Device happens.)

Raleigh's a mile along the wall when the chopper sets down. He hears the _whup-whup-whup_ and turns to look, ears pricked up, the sled harness cutting against his collarbone. He looks for the insignia but can't see anything; it's a snub-nosed silhouette, propellers slicing up the milk-bright sun and scattering snow when it lands.

It has to be PPDC. Who else has helicopters these days?

Raleigh's cleared out already. He finished out the week and got his ration book, gave his bed up, told the guys he drank with that he was drifting on to another site. He's ready for a long run: skimming over frozen mud, his life zipped up in a duffel and strapped to a sled, tail high and head clear. Nothing to worry about but the next two hour mark and a moment of bare feet against the tundra before he morphs again.

He could keep going. It would take whoever's in that chopper weeks to find him again, if they ever do.

But the dog-brain is pawing at him, urging him to go back, because that shape is familiar and rare; it's something he's missed, a home where he can sleep in any corner he likes and no-one will throw beer bottles at his head.

The human part of him says _What if they're not here for you?_ and Raleigh doesn't know which answer he'd prefer. He doesn't have to know. That's the best part about this body, besides the warm pelt and a tail that curves over his nose while he sleeps, better than the teeth that crack bone and the open smile on some men's faces and the cascading bliss of their fingers along his spine.

He's running for the chopper before he even thinks about it, paws going _bapbapbapbap_ and the sled scratching along behind him, tarp shushing, the harness joint rattling with a loose screw.

The spot where he kept his sled is still clear, a red-dirt splotch beneath a gutted backhoe. He slips the harness off and pauses, morphs out. Might as well reset the two-hour limit when he can, and he needs opposable thumbs to wedge the sled safely out of sight and out of wind.

Raleigh curls his fingers against his thighs and looks back at the wall he wanted to leave. He's cold. His heart hurts. A man is walking from the chopper, his silhouette as distinctive as the blades and skids and sleek ruddered tail.

_Marshal Stacker Pentecost._

Raleigh goes dog again and gallops for the wall.

It's easier than it should be to sneak in through a side door, slipping among the legs and boots. Someone calls out, "Hey! Balto!" but he weaves out of their sight. A hard hat clips him on the shoulder. Someone rakes their fingers over his rump as he passes. He can't stay here for too long, because there's too much sensation: the smells are ripe and jumbled and overwhelming; the color spectrum's muted but every movement is a bull's eye, demanding, distracting. He gets like that when he's human, too, edging further and further out of the crowd until he's gnawing his rations on a pile of rubble, alone.

Raleigh doesn't remember what the Marshal smells like but he knows what smells don't belong here now: a different kind of engine grease; chicken and soy; the chemical flatness of regulation soap.

Raleigh follows those smells to the foreman's office, a pre-fab rectangle with an open top and broken blinds. He should walk in and make himself known; he should talk to Pentecost with his head held up if not exactly high. If he were human, he would, but it's too easy to stay on all fours. It's stable and immediate. The past doesn't sit behind his ribs like a second heart—the broken kind, held in storage until someone needs the parts.

Raleigh edges his nose around the doorway. All he can see is the foreman—harsh voice, beef smell, fingers Raleigh's never felt—looking at a printout. "Yeah, I guess I've seen him. Been a couple of days, though. This section's almost done. A lot of the workers have moved on to Sheldon Point already."

"You don't know for sure?" The Marshal's voice is still the same, precise and deep like a concrete canal. His accent hasn't flattened at all despite his years stationed around the world.

Raleigh creeps in a few more inches so he can see: yeah, there's Pentecost, taller than Raleigh remembers, shoulders as broad and sharp-edged as a welding kit.

The foreman snorts. "I've got six hundred guys up there, and God knows how many in the camps waiting for a spot to open up."

Pentecost twists his lip at that. He didn't rule with an iron fist, but his personnel were always accounted for; all the screws and lugnuts, too. Inventory week was enough to make Tendo's hair fall down.

Raleigh chances another step, trying to get a glimpse of the print-out ( _it's you it's gotta be you. heel, boy_ ) and the Marshal clocks him. Raleigh's tail swings low.

"Hello there—I recognize you," Pentecost says, smiling slight and warm. Raleigh's heart skips a beat before he remembers where he got this morph—a hanger dog at the Shatterdome who used to run alongside the crawler and bark at Lady Danger as she moved out to sea. Did the Marshal ever greet Raleigh in this form, back in Anchorage? Maybe once, when Raleigh was trying to slip past on some dare.

Pentecost leans over to keep his uniform trousers out of shedding range as he gives Raleigh's head a heavy pat. "You're a ways from Anchorage."

"Oh, that's a _wall dog_ ," says the foreman, the way some people say _rat_. "There's a hundred of 'em that follow the crews down the coastline, pick up and head on to the next section of the wall when we do. Gotta go where the food is, right?"

Pentecost tilts his head. "Look at you, begging for scraps. All the other people here work for their food."

_I did six shifts this week, top of the wall_ , thinks Raleigh. He almost thought-speaks it, sour and defensive. Pentecost pulls that out of him, always has; the man demands a response.

"Easy, Sprocket," Pentecost says.

Raleigh didn't even realize that his hackles were up until the Marshal's voice smoothed them down again, as heavy as a hand upon his ruff.

"Sprocket?" the foreman asks.

Raleigh's surprised that Pentecost knew that—he never had much to do with the hanger dogs—but then, Sprocket had been a feisty little brat. You could hear techs shouting his name across the hanger any hour of the day.

Pentecost shrugs, the crisp lines of his coat making it a production. "That's his name, if I've recognized him right. Why, what do you call him?"

"Dunno. 'Dog,' mostly. Sometimes 'Asshole.'" The word's harsh in the cold air. Typical lunkhead foreman; no idea how to talk to a Marshal. He catches Raleigh glancing at the stack of ration packs in the corner—it was just instinct; Raleigh's not gonna steal from his fellow workers—and scoops an empty soda can off the desk to lob at him. "Get outta here, mutt."

Raleigh spins and trots off, but tosses an imperious woo over his shoulder as he goes. _Sprocket's a purebred malamute, jackass._

The Marshal says something. Raleigh doesn't catch the words, but it doesn't sound friendly.

He ends up outside and goes for the tarmac and the chopper sitting pretty in the middle of it. There's a million new smells, some caustic like gasoline and smoke, but there's a fresh sky smell, too, and another continent's rain. It takes a strong will to ignore his nose and Raleigh's feeling shaky and bruised and hopeful, so he just goes with it, tail whipping like the propellers might and running from one end of the 'copter to the other. The pilot stomps over and Raleigh sniffs him, too, from the strange detergent in the fabric over his knees to the layers of skin oil in the laces to the grit falling out from the treads of his boots.

The pilot's patient, firm-fingered, crooning admonishments that Raleigh doesn't have to understand.

Something lands on the tarmac nearby and Raleigh curves to sniff at it without even thinking. It's food, soft and rich, nothing like anybody's had around here in ages. He cocks his head and glances up along the plausible trajectory: there's a woman sitting on the lip of the helicopter hatch, her boot heels barely scraping the ground. She's holding wax paper spotted translucent with grease.

"Go ahead," she says, and Raleigh doesn't want to be rude, so he stretches his neck forward and laps up the scrap delicately, tongue carefully clear of the tarmac and the oil and mud smeared into it.

The pilot laughs, says something, walks away.

The paper rustles; the woman's tearing off a piece of the food in her hand—a kind of bun, with delicious paste inside. "Another?" she asks.

Raleigh pads closer. The woman swings her arm, a practice arc, then tosses it out. He catches the food midair with a wet clack of teeth and she gasps, impressed. Raleigh maybe puffs his chest out a little. His tail's been sweeping slowly back and forth ever since he saw her.

"Are you friendly?" she asks.

Raleigh trills at her. He's friendly because she's friendly; kind voice, big face, fingers holding out food.

"Come here, closer," she says. He inches forward with his head low and his tail still going. "Good boy." Her voice dips into the lower register that lights up his happiness circuit. He takes the food from her hand, teeth carefully kept back, tongue flickering just barely against her fingers, then darts back a few feet in case that was Bad. "It's okay," she chirps. She holds out her hand, empty but curved in invitation.

Raleigh sidles up cautiously and she lets him sniff, touches his snout gently with her knuckles. When he doesn't protest or spook, she draws her fingernails up between his eyes, across his pate, and down into the thick fur at his neck. "So handsome," she says, and Raleigh's tail sweeps faster. "Do you have a collar?" she asks, fingers rooting around for it. "No? Do you have a name? I'm Mako."

_Mako._ Raleigh loves Mako. He curves around her legs, leaning hard against them, and pants happily when she strokes his ears and slaps her palms against his ribcage. She drums her fingertips against the soft seam of his mouth and laughs when Raleigh darts his tongue out, licking the last trace of savory from her skin.

"Sorry, I have no more food," she says. "Do you still like me?"

_Of course I do_ , Raleigh thinks, and gives a distressed little woo. What kind of a cad does she take him for?

"Okay," she says, and presses down on his rump. He sits immediately, muscles and bones curving in response like his furless body used to do on the sparring mats, years ago. "Good," she says, simple and soft, just like his instructors used to speak.

Raleigh snuffles at her pant legs and boot uppers, at more strange scents from a far-away place: axle grease, dumplings, hot copper wire.

She gives him a moment, then pushes his snout away with the heel of her hand. "Stay. I have an idea," she says, then her legs lift up and away, boot-tips whooshing carefully past his nose. She disappears into the dark of the hold. Raleigh lifts up, balancing on his back legs like they're kangaroo feet, to watch her root around among dark and irregular shapes. She comes back out hand first, holding a ball.

"Do you play fetch?"

Raleigh perks up at the word, ears tilting forward, mouth dropping open without thinking about it. _Yes yes yes throw it please._

"Fetch?" she says again, and Raleigh cuts his glance to the side like maybe she threw something already; a conditioned response. Mako laughs at his expense and hops down from the hatch. "Go get it!" she cries, and tosses the ball out in a smooth arc.

Raleigh bolts after it and catches the ball before it hits the ground—hard rubber, just the right amount of give between his teeth, not too acrid against his tongue.

"Good job," Mako says when he rolls it into her waiting palm. "But I think I made that too easy for you." She chucks him beneath the chin before she throws the ball again. It goes long this time, hitting the edge of the tarmac with just a foot to spare and bouncing up high. Raleigh runs full pelt and swoops around a pothole, a snowdrift, a length of chain with rusted links as thick as a man's leg. He intercepts the ball after the second bounce. There's still enough velocity to jitter his teeth and it's covered with snow that melts down his throat as he canters back.

Mako's teeth flash in the sunlight and she kneels down when he gets close, taking the ball from his mouth with one hand while the other hand ruffles the fur between his ears. "Impressive," she says. "Again?"

Raleigh dances back to get some room and paws at the air.

"Okay," says Mako. "Think fast!" She fakes him out with a showy jerk over his head, then a sleight-of-hand toss behind her. The ball skids under the belly of the chopper.

Raleigh twirls and nearly bowls her over as he dives after it, his working crouch shifting up into a straight-legged run when he gets clear. He outpaces the ball and chomps it when it pops up against a piece of gravel.

Mako, watching from the other side of the helicopter, cheers. Raleigh's tail thumps against the underside of the chopper as he comes back. He noses right into the nook of her arms and bent knees, his body curling flush against hers, and demands another head-pat before he releases the ball. "Good boy," she murmurs fervently into his ears, then blows out to tickle the tufts of fur there.

She works him harder after that, throwing near and far. She teases him by ricocheting the ball off her boot sole and back into her hand before he can catch it. "Gotta be faster than that," she chirps, and laughs at his indignant trill. She slams the ball down into a series of high bounces that Raleigh sprints circles around, his dog brain as adept at calculating trajectories and impact points as a LOCCENT console. Mako digs her fingers into his neck fur and kisses him right between the eyes for that one.

The wall crew would toss stuff for him sometimes, and slap him cheerfully on the ribs, but they never watched him the way Mako does, gauging his abilities and pushing him in increments beyond them. They never seemed as delighted as she is by how his body twists and leaps.

The chopper pilot crawls out from the cockpit to watch, but after the ball zooms past his head, he waves off Mako's shouted apology with a grin and disappears again.

Raleigh's getting into a groove, limbs tingly-hot and his brain a maelstrom of _fetchrunpantpraisekiss_ when the ball takes a bad bounce. It goes up and sideways and Raleigh hairpins after it, but— _thunk_ —the ball lands right in the middle of a debris pile.

Raleigh stops hard at the base of the pile, back paws sliding ahead of his front paws and shoving up a flurry of dirty snow and barely-thawed topsoil. The pile is at least twenty feet high, stacked with pipes and girders and nuggets of concrete with bent rebar bristles.

Raleigh lets out a short, sharp howl and paws indignantly at a caterpillar tread.

"Oh, no." Mako is right behind him, boots crunching against the grit and the snow. "I can see it," she says, her left hand cupping his head casually as she comes up next to him. She points with the other hand: "It's right there."

Raleigh knows where it is because he saw it land there, and it's the only perfect sphere in the pile. The color stands out a little to him—a vague yellow—so maybe it's really bright to the human eye.

Raleigh bumps his snout against her thigh ( _be right back_ ) and clambers up a little ways, testing for a safe path: this cinderblock is solid; that window frame is jammed securely beneath something else. The pile has been here for months, snow stacked up on the leeward side, all the bits and pieces pinned under their own weight.

"Careful," Mako says. She has her hands jammed into her pockets, head tilted, studying the debris with a calculating eye.

Raleigh snuffles in acknowledgment and makes his way around the perimeter. Halfway up the other side, while investigating a promising series of flat-topped barrels, he hears a scrape and the squeaking slide of cold rubber. He picks his way back down and peeks around the side of Metal Junk Mountain.

Mako's wrestling with the caterpillar tread, a good six feet of heavy rubber cracked with cold and fractally bleached by years of grinding over salted roads. She heaves the end of it over a metal pole that's been propped up against concrete chunks, and then works the pole securely into a rip in the tread there. Then she cantilevers the whole thing up, her legs braced diagonally, her hands gripped white-knuckled around the icy metal.

Raleigh thinks, ridiculously, about getting his work gloves from his duffel. Her hands are going to be red when she pulls away, the finger pads flattened and holding the imprint of the pole like chilled dough, creases stained with rust.

But she keeps at her task, slow and jerky but unflagging, until the pole is upright and the tread is sloping down from it like a jaeger's wedding veil. Then she turns, angles it according to some precalculation toward the pile, then lets pole and tread both slap down in a controlled fall.

Metal Junk Mountain creaks, complains, maintains its structural integrity. The snowdrift slumps, an avalanche in micro. Raleigh skips sideways just fast enough to keep it from swarming his feet.

Mako glances over her shoulder, smiles briefly at him, and goes back to work. She lifts the ground end of the pole, props it against her hip, and wedges it into some notch or mechanical elbow deep in the debris pile. The ground end notches beneath a concrete nugget. She kicks it: the thing is as stable as if it's been there for weeks.

The caterpillar tread, she tugs and lays over the pole like a runner carpet, and suddenly Raleigh sees what she's been making: a wide and winding road going up the mountainside, corrugated rubber as tough and tacky as asphalt.

The ball is still snug in its accidental cubby, just half a foot beyond the top of the tread.

Mako rubs her hands together, rests them on her hips, and beams.

Raleigh stares, breath wisping up from his slack-open snout. His fur's sitting weird in his skin and his arms are too stiff and short, whiskers over-sensitive: intense bodily dysphoria because his human brain came roiling up. It takes a higher order intelligence to recognize engineering like this.

Mako sets one foot on the tread and Raleigh blurts out a bark that sounds too much like _Don't!_ Mako can use her body just fine—even with her weight still on solid ground she has good lines, a quick-calibrating center of gravity—but she has clunky boots and soft bare skin, and the ball is nestled among sharp, twisted things clotted with rust.

Raleigh lopes over and nudges ahead of her as politely as he can. She sniffs in aggravation, but lets him past to clamber neatly up the make-do ramp. He's up in a second—the tread is easier beneath his feet than frozen tundra and grit-cluttered contruction floors, to be honest—and back down again, nose stinging from a slice of metal when he eased his cage of teeth around the ball.

Mako takes the ball from him when he's just halfway down and they're the same height. "We make a pretty good team," she says, and leans in close enough for him to lick her marbled cheek.

Raleigh jumps down before she stares into his eyes for too long. He's amazed and smitten and worried that there's gonna be too much human there, gazing out.

They walk slowly back to the chopper. Raleigh sticks close enough that her knees bump against his ribcage with every step and his tail drifts in and out of the curl of her palm. He hopes Mako doesn't mind the fur all over her sharp black coat. He can't help it.

She does notice, and brushes at the hem, but leaves it alone to hop up on the hatchlip. She sits, boots swinging close above the tarmac, like she was when Raleigh first saw her. He plops down at her feet, pleasantly exhausted.

The sun has rolled to the other side of the horizon already. The light's always slant and weak this time of year, but in the afternoons it goes slightly orange, turning the ocean and tundra and crackly-stiff Wall into peach candy. Raleigh can't appreciate it right now, but he hopes Mako does. Alaska's cold and scuffed-bare and spectral; maybe that's something she can understand.

Raleigh's heartsick for a home he never left. He really wants her to understand.

Mako shivers. There's a gap between the hem of her coat and the tops of her boots. Her trousers are thick canvas, standard issue, but unless she thought to put on long-johns underneath the wind is probably cutting right through. Raleigh wraps himself around her ankles, cozies his belly over her boot-tips, floofs his tail over his nose. She reaches down to pet him, but he demurely turns his head away. It feels amazing, of course, but she should keep her hands in her pockets or tucked beneath her arms to stay warm.

  
They stay like that for a long time, wind shushing gently, his heart pulsing slow, and Mako's fingers paddling against the computer tablet she pulled out from the hold. Suddenly, she says, "Any luck?" and Raleigh looks up: the Marshal's back, dress shoes clicking hard against the tarmac.

"No," he says. "There's no telling where Becket is. I checked all through the camp." He falls silent for a moment, and Raleigh knows what he's thinking about: the spark-scarred workboots, rows of cots, unshaven men with sharp, red cheekbones and soft, dark hollows beneath their eyes.

"It will take months to restore the jaeger," Mako says. "You can come back, try again."

"That's true," says Pentecost. He leans closer, his arm pressing crisply against hers. They have matching creases down each sleeve. "What's this?" he says.

_Play it cool_ , thinks Raleigh, but the way he hides his nose under his paw probably looks more like guilt.

"It is an idea, a new weapon for the mach three," Mako says, and Raleigh's ears perk up.

"I see that," Pentecost says, voice full of amusement, his fingers drifting curiously over Mako's computer tablet when she angles it up for him to look at. "I meant your new friend."

Raleigh unwraps himself from her legs and slinks away, out of sight under the chopper.

"Marshal," Mako says disapprovingly, as if she thinks Pentecost spooked him on purpose.

Pentecost says something Raleigh doesn't catch; somewhere, iron beams are tumbling into a pile and men are shouting. Steam hisses from the hydraulic joints of a crane. Welding kits crackle.

Mako slides off the hatch-lip and crouches down, her coat flaring stiffly out. Her face is in shadow but brighter, somehow, than all the snow and sky and concrete behind her.

"Sprocket?" she calls.

Raleigh woofs quietly in response.

"You shouldn't hide," she says, hand curled, palm up. Raleigh's used to that hand, now, knows it is soft and kind, but he stays put. "Come out, boy. I promise the Marshal will be nice."

"Do you, now?" Pentecost asks, amused.

Mako turns to face him, but Raleigh doesn't know what her expression is, or how Pentecost responds besides the twist of his legs. Mako turns back again, her hair swinging neatly. There's a new note of command in her voice when she snaps, "Come here." She clicks her tongue and Raleigh army-crawls, lurching toward her like she yanked on his puppet strings.

Mako grins, reaches out to take Raleigh's face into her hands when he's close enough. "He seems very well-trained," she murmurs as she strokes his ears.

"His commanding officer must have been a stickler for discipline," the Marshal says drily.

Raleigh, eyes slitted, drunk from Mako's fingertips, dredges up enough presence of mind to mark the date that Stacker Pentecost cracked a joke.

"Why do none of the other Shatterdomes have hanger dogs?" Mako asks, tugging Raleigh further out from under the chopper. "Stay," she tells him firmly

Pentecost shrugs. "Anchorage wasn't supposed to. I believe the dogs were originally a donation from a patriotic citizen, and then," he gestures delicately, "perpetuated themselves." He smirks at Raleigh, then gazes back out over at the wall, the sharp-edged entrance and the line of workers trudging in.

"Will you miss Alaska?" Mako asks.

After a moment, the Marshal says, "I'm not sure. I don't think so. What I will miss is no longer here." He glances down at Raleigh. "Did you know that, Sprocket? They shut it down. No Shatterdome to go back to, even if you wanted to."

Raleigh shifts his paws in agitation and gives a sharp bark. _How could they do that?_

"You're upsetting him," Mako says, and croons some nonsense Japanese into Raleigh's ear: _poor thing_ and _pretty_ and _good_.

The pilot comes around the nose of the chopper. "Ready to fly, sir," he says, accent thick.

"Thank you," Pentecost answers. He shoves his hands in his coat pockets and watches them. "Do you like that dog, Mako?" he asks.

"Yes, very much, sir," Mako answers.

Raleigh straightens with pride, haunches curled in the sit-pretty version of a parade rest. He sneaks a tiny lick to the ball of Mako's hand— _I like you, too!_

Pentecost smiles, small but genuine. "Do you think the dog will like Hong Kong?"

Mako gasps, face opening up with a grin. "I can bring him?"

"If you can get him on the chopper." Pentecost looks over at the pilot. "Will an extra sixty pounds be alright?"

Raleigh is happy because Mako is happy, so it takes him a moment to realize what the Marshal is suggesting. Hong Kong? Leave the wall and set foot in a Shatterdome again? So this a consolation prize—Pentecost couldn't find the has-been he wanted so he's taking in a rescue instead. Or would Raleigh have been a pathetic stray anyway, regardless of thumbs?

Mako sets her foot on the chopper steps and says, "C'mere, boy."

Raleigh dances away. Mako frowns and Raleigh bows, chin on paws, tail tucked in apology.

Pentecost strides over to him, implacable and huge. He blocks the wind when he crouches down.

Raleigh nearly darts away, just on instinct, but Pentecost digs his fingers deep into the ruff—not to pet, but to capture, corral. "You—" He inhales like he's about to bellow, but his next words are just as even and controlled as all his others. "—are not a wall dog." Pentecost cups Raleigh's snout in his hands. "You belong in a Shatterdome. Get in the chopper."

Raleigh whines and tries to jerk his snout away. He wants to go, he does; the Marshal's using that tone that made Raleigh hop-to when he was a pilot, and in dog form it's as subtle and implacable as tidal undertow, a fact of the environment that cannot be refused.

Pentecost sighs. He's _disappointed_ , Raleigh's a _Bad Dog_ and it's the worst thing. Raleigh wriggles backwards, whimpers leaking from the pit of his throat.

"He is scared," Mako says.

Pentecost growls in dissent. "I know that dog. He was all over the machinery in Anchorage. It won't take him long to get back into the swing of things, if he's brave."

"I will help him be brave," Mako says. A chill travels down Raleigh's spine and right through his tail, which quivers briefly like a tuning fork. She talks like the Marshal does: simple words laid over certainties.

And Raleigh would be on that chopper in a second, he would, but—

"Hey, mister!" someone calls out, voice arching over the wind with the easiness of long practice. "You trying to take that dog?"

"Does he belong to anyone?" Mako asks.

The worker schleps up, the welding kit on his back shifting back and forth, a pendulum swinging in time with his stride. "Nah, his owner's dead. Bought it working the top of the wall."

The Marshal stares at Raleigh, peering through his fur and skin and skull. He's gonna reach in any second and pull out the memories of Raleigh spreading that story around between beers, laying out his own alibi. He had to. Everyone notices a sad dog.

The worker—Connor, maybe? A busy sweater and boots that smell like fish—wiggles his fingers in Raleigh's direction as a greeting.

Raleigh creeps over for a cursory skritch, just to be polite.

Connor turns back to Pentecost and Mako. "The mally keeps waiting for his master to come back, though. It followed the workers all the way from Anchorage, still mushing his bag."

The Marshal quits mind-reading and looks at the worker. "You're saying the dog has _luggage?_ "

Yeah—socks and underwear and photos creased from Yancy's fingers and a glowing blue cube, wrapped up tight in an old sweater and shoved to the bottom. Raleigh traded half a ration book for a top-shelf combination lock.

Connor nods. "It drags a duffel around on a sled. Wish I had a dog for that. These things get heavy." He hefts the welding kit and Raleigh can hear his shoulder pop, worn out cartilage grinding against brittle bone. Connor's not old, but he's tired.

Pentecost lets out a slow, measured breath. "Alright," he says, tone softer and more understanding. "Go get it, boy."

Raleigh yelps a _yessir_ and bounds off.

He morphs human again to tug the sled out, and the anxiety hits him like a boot to the stomach— _what the hell are you doing they'll find out they don't want you how will you explain this later what if they want you to—what if you can't—_

Raleigh gulps in a breath too fast and the cold scrapes down his throat. He grips the harness tightly, knuckles blanching with pressure, the rest of his hand marbling in the cold.

"It's the end of the world," he tells himself quietly. "There's not a lot of second chances left."

He morphs dog again, noses himself into the harness with a practiced slither, and trots back to the chopper.

"Good boy," Pentecost says, rumbly and careful, eyebrows up like he wasn't sure the dog was gonna come back. He slides his fingers along the stiff harness and buckle like it's a new lever in the Conn-pod, then slips it over Raleigh's head. "Clever," he says, examining it. "Don't even need thumbs for this, do you?" He prods at the lock and Raleigh huffs in warning. "Alright, then," Pentecost says, and hauls the whole contraption into the hold. He carefully brushes the squiggly white hair from his coat sleeves—the duffel's coated with it, honestly.

Mako beams from inside the chopper and pats her leg, invites Raleigh in. He leaps up straight from ground to hatch-lip. Purebred malamutes don't need stairs.

The 'copter hold has a glut of new smells and dark corners to stick his nose in and warm panels to paw at. Mako gives him a minute to investigate, then clicks her tongue and pats the seat next to her. Raleigh leaps up there easy, curls up with his limbs and paws tucked nicely and his head across her lap. Her hand falls naturally across his neck, fingers stroking from chin to throat.

The Marshal sits down opposite and crosses his arms, watching them like they're candidates in the Kwoon.

Mako fiddles Raleigh's whiskers; he brings his paw up to protest and she messes with that, too, tickling the tufts between his paw pads, tapping her nails against his, then cradling the whole foot in her palm. Raleigh's tail fwumps quietly against the seat.

The chopper putters to life, lurches up, carries them into the sky and far away from walls and snow and hungry men.

Raleigh falls asleep to the rumbling of the engine and the warmth of Mako's belly against his head and her thighs beneath his snout. He wakes up with a jolt—how long has it been? His internal clock has gotten pretty accurate these past few years, and the two-hour mark is coming up fast. He cascades off the seat and noses around the hold, looking for some cover or bulkhead to hide behind.

"Sprocket?" Mako says, on her knees to peer at him over the back of the seat.

Pentecost puts down the newspaper he'd been reading—one of the crappy rags the wall workers put out, a weird mix of pre-rebellion muttering and self-conscious patriotism—and looks at his watch. "We'll let him out when we refuel. I'm sure he'll calm down in a moment."

Raleigh clambers up on his sled as casually as he can and flops down on the duffel, forcing himself to lay there long enough that they'll think he just wants a familiar place to sleep. It's comfortable enough—Raleigh always packs the soft stuff on top and keeps the zippers tucked away under their flaps so they won't catch on his fur. It's a handy bed on the tundra, plenty big if he curls up tightly enough.

"See?" Pentecost says. "The dog is fine. Now, Mako, I am curious as to where you are with the exhaust problem."

Raleigh peeks through one eye and sees Mako turn away, holding out her tablet for Pentecost to see.

Slow and careful, Raleigh finds some netting next to his duffel and squirms underneath it, then further still into a nest of canvas. It's tricky, morphing in a crowded space like this, but he's done it before. He checks all his limbs, making sure that nothing's poking out and that there's enough room for his human self. Through a gap, he sees Mako and Pentecost bent over the tablet, conveniently absorbed in something other than the restless pile of canvas in the corner.

In the few seconds Raleigh spends as a human, it occurs to him that there wasn't much that happened in the Shatterdome that the Marshal didn't know about one way or another. It's been five years but the guy's still sharp.

As fur bursts from his skin and the last bones shrivel and twist and reform, the dog brain must crawl up the back way, sneaky and strong, because Raleigh's next thought is: _It'll be nice to have good owners again_.


End file.
